Cultural Insights

Saturday, November 29th

When I first arrived here, everything looked and felt different, even strange. I couldn't understand the language, and none of the shops were familiar. Leaving the airport, the traffic, roads, and cars all were different. The trees were shaped into boxes and the roads were twisted and curved. At that time, everything felt a bit alternative, and I couldn't even clearly express why.

People's first question was always how the countries compared. I tried to explain what I noticed, to those back home and here, but it was difficult. It still is. I notice small things in routines or behavior, but it's hard to say "this is the way it is." Even though it's a different place, I recognize similarities and differences amongst everything. If I think I know a "rule," I normally run into several circumstances that disprove it.

While trying to reason my way around what the culture is and is not, I met a family that welcomed me in very authentically. They asked kind questions and let me into their family life. The warmth behind their hospitality showed me a new view of life in the Netherlands. At this time I began to get to know the teachers at the school more closely and to enjoy our discussions and planning together. While students' behavior had thrown me off before, I also began to see the mixture of confident, sweet, intelligent, expressive, and difficult students. Instead of trying to place the culture and the people on various scales of tendencies, I was increasingly feeling an appreciation for the variety of lifestyles and lives there were around me.

During this transition, I started to understand that people are people everywhere. As much as we try to understand personalities, groups, and cultures, there is always individuality within each person and place. You cannot say this is how it is. There are patterns and routines, traditions and context, but each life is a new life. There is love, kindness, introversion, extraversion, selfishness, open-heartedness, confusion, and beauty in every place and perhaps, in every person. People everywhere are choosing what to follow and where to invest, shaping who they become.

With time, I've felt less and less interested in trying to figure out what the culture is here and more and more interested in who the people around me are. I don't want to focus on comparing them to us reducing the culture to a conversation about similarities and differences, but rather go beyond with stories of who I met, and for myself, memories of life here.

I came to the Netherlands with an excitement to see it and experience life here. Now that the excitement has become reality, the biking to school, riding the train to meet a friend, or having tea four times in a day is just life. And I am very thankful that I get to live in this place, with these people, in this time.

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